Productivity Commission on land for housing

It’s 331 pages long, so here’s a summary of some of the recommendations:

Large land price differentials between different types of zones, such as those observed in Auckland, should be a trigger for local authorities to review the adequacy of their land supplies and zoning decisions.

High-growth local authorities should express their land supply targets in terms of zoned and serviced land and report publicly on their performance.

The Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, in conjunction with relevant local authorities, should inventory public land holdings in all high-growth cities to identify sites that could be used for housing.

The Government should introduce amendments to the RMA to clarify the role and importance of housing and urban environments.

In reviewing their District Plans, local authorities should move more residential land-use activities into “permitted” or “restricted discretionary” status.

Councils should identify areas where there is existing infrastructure capacity and ensure that planning rules do not prevent intensification from occurring in these areas.

Councils should pursue opportunities to make more efficient use of existing infrastructure assets including through greater use of user charges where this can reduce demands on infrastructure.

Government should adopt the Local Government Infrastructure Advisory Group’s recommendation to amend the Land Transport Management Act to allow pricing on existing roads where there is a business case that enables effective network optimisation.

The Treasury, in consultation with the Department of Internal Affairs, should investigate removing the rating exemption on land owned by the core Crown, including on land used for health and education purposes.

There is a place for a UDA to lead and coordinate residential development at scale in both greenfield and brownfield settings, working in partnership with private sector developers. Legislation would be required to establish and give powers (such as compulsory acquisition) to one or more UDCs in New Zealand.

The Productivity Commission are neutral experts whose task is to come up with solutions to issues that reduce our productivity. I hope the Government takes up most of their recommendations. The compulsory acquisition power for UDCs I don’t support, but the other stuff I do

Colville

The Treasury, in consultation with the Department of Internal Affairs, should investigate removing the rating exemption on land owned by the core Crown, including on land used for health and education purposes.

Why should central govt collect taxes to pay them to local govt? hardly efficient.

The Treasury, in consultation with the Department of Internal Affairs, should investigate removing the rating exemption on land owned by the core Crown, including on land used for health and education purposes.

Why should central govt collect taxes to pay them to local govt? hardly efficient.
========================
Surprised you even had to ask this question.

The answer; because there is no reason why ratepayers should subsidize the Crown.
Make it rateable and then we will soon find out how much the Crown owns but doesn’t collect rent from. It follows that land owned by the coloured ones and churches should also be rated. Everyone equal unto the law.

Did I note somewhere that this commission of communists and socialists also recommended that private property rights should also be usurped and land confiscated ( for want of a better word) under compulsory acquisition law?

Our history of compulsory acquisition of the last two centuries went really well did it not?
We have another 10 centuries of paying that back.

Fucking socialists and I heard English say that it could be considered.

Apart from cost issues the so called “housing crisis” is a bullshit Auckland issue. And 75% of New Zealand lives outside the white shoe area. Further, as HSBC Chief Economist for Aus and NZ, Paul Bloxham (you know, the rock star economy fellow, Auckland’s “problem” is similar to the problems in many other cities around the world, and will eventually self correct.

And as for the NZ economy right now?? The HSBC still regards NZ as a world leader, bei8ng sell managed, and NOT in any danger of collapse any time soon.

An Urban Dev Company to work in partnership with Private firms…… hmmmm. Call me cynical but that would open a decent size opportunity for a little crony corruption methinks…..

Government paying rates is a good thing. As noted above it would drive some land use efficiency behaviour in crown entities.

But would also directly expose central government to the rapicous rates pricing policies of local government. Which might actual get Mr English to recognise the pain citizens are experiencing with the never ending above inflation rate rates increases…. heck central government might even move to constrain the monopilistic price rorting of local governments…

jp_1983

Did I note somewhere that this commission of communists and socialists also recommended that private property rights should also be usurped and land confiscated ( for want of a better word) under compulsory acquisition law?

G152

Let market forces free in Auckland.
You want to live there be prepared to pay Auckland prices
Iwi want to have all the unoccupied land in Auckland they buy it at market rates.
And pay rates on the developed valuation to prevent land banking.
Any reneging the land is returned to the Government control and not the Auckland Council

@Viking2: nothing wrong with compulsory acquisition so long as it is compensated. Lot of fishhooks with that compensation, but you’d never get anything done if every single person has veto power over it.

greenjacket

I am flabbergasted. I had no idea this monster hyrda of socialist planning freaks existed.
The NZ dollar was floated to prevent speculators gaming the currency. To have land turned into a speculative currency to meet the demands of bubbles is the equivalent.

Land in NZ is privately owned. If you want pakeha to rise up in land wars too just continue with this fatuous waste of public adminstration space. “Productivity Commission” should be renamed “NZ State Socialist Guided Planning, Control, Regulatory and Economic Administration Supervisory Commission and Executive”.

Following the distribution yesterday of the General Email with respect to the New Zealand Productivity Commission latest report on housing and links to associated material illustrating the intensity of the public discussion of these issues in New Zealand (see below) … the Knight Frank Global Property Year to March 2015 Index, expertly reported above by Inga Ting of Fairfax Australia, is further evidence of the poor performance by the New Zealand Government with its Local Governments in getting unnecessary housing inflation under control.

To use a Texan expression … New Zealand Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith is all hat and no horse.

New Zealanders are fed up with the political play acting … and are demanding action … as outlined within the New Zealand Herald article by Bryce Edwards ( and hyperlink within General Email below).

New Zealand Housing Minister Dr Nick Smith could start by taking sound advice from grounded people with solid track-records of success in the local government and development sectors.

The poorly schooled bureaucrats, with no real life experience, are an irritating distraction.

In spite of the constant political theatrics and grandstanding at the Central level across the political spectrum … and the stream of mind-numbing reports, which are rarely read … the essential cultural changes are starting to get underway at the local government level … particularly Christchurch and Auckland.

This is extremely heartening.

Even with the massive public and media discussion of these issues these past 10 years since the release of the first Demographia Survey early 2005 (refer schedule http://www.PerformanceUrbanPlanning.org ), New Zealand is building nowhere near enough houses.

The proper measure of building performance is the consent / start / completion rate per 1000 population per annum. On a consenting basis, New Zealand is still roughly at a lousy 5.0 … Australia near 9.0.

The raw numbers on their own are meaningless … unless they are related to the changing underlying population base of the specific markets being discussed.

Historically … prior to politicians and planners screwing up normal housing production … New Zealand with its generally lower population growth, would oscillate 5.0 through 7.0 per 1000 population per annum during a normal building cycle … Australia 8.0 through 10.0 (see MacroBusiness Australia graph below).

When the Christchurch earthquakes replacement requirements are factored in as well, the New Zealand consenting rate should have been well north of 7.0 … around 9.0 units per 1000 population per annum.

These moderate building cycle oscillations are essential for the medium and long term productivity / pricing performance of the development / construction sectors. Wild swings, induced by political / planning incompetence, understandably degenerate the culture of the industry to a cowboy one … just make hay while the sun shines attitudes emerge.

Little wonder then the Knight Frank Global Index illustrates New Zealand has a worse housing inflation problem than Australia.

Housing Minister Nick Smith appears to have made it his particular mission to prove Key’s analysis was correct by making Auckland’s housing problems even more complex and longstanding.

There is an increasingly long catalogue of hiccups in his attempts to address it. There have been bus tours to Crown-owned land that turned out not to be owned by the Crown, there have been cemeteries and substations. … rerad more via hyperlink above …

Where is the Auckland ‘housing crisis’ – when the mantra of ‘an extra million people coming to Auckland over the next 30 years’ was effectively ‘made up’ by the Mayor of Auckland, Len Brown. and the (former) Auckland Council Chief Planning Officer Dr Roger Blakeley choosing to use the Department of Statistics ‘high’ population growth projection – instead of their recommended ‘medium’ population growth projection of an extra 700,000 people?

This ‘extra million people’ mantra – has then been used to drive the ‘Special Housing Areas’ legislation – which has been used to try and ‘economically cleanse’ State tenants off prime real estate, particularly in Tamaki, and push the privatisation of State housing by ‘social housing’ – for which there is no electoral mandate.

Combine that with the ‘ghost City’ of an extra 22,000 EMPTY private sector houses in the Auckland region, according to the 2013 Census?

This is ‘democracy for developers’ – in my opinion – on STEROiDS.

How much is the Auckland real estate market being used for ‘money laundering’?

Who is checking?

Why does New Zealand not (yet) have an Independent Commission Against Corruption?